


Averbal

by GloriaMundi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Communication Failure, Community: trope_bingo, M/M, Nonverbal Communication, poor communication skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5057470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's body doesn't speak the same language that Steve remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Averbal

It takes Steve a while to notice what's changed. Okay, sure, _everything_ 's changed. The Bucky Barnes he grew up with didn't have a metal arm: didn't have that thousand-yard stare, that beaten look, those shoulders. (Steve thinks he'd have been scared of Bucky back then. Scared and turned on. Couldn't have helped himself. Just the sheer potential violence of Bucky's body: just the way he could've done anything at all to Steve.)

(Okay, so he could pretty much have done anything at all to Steve anyway, at least before Erskine and the serum and Steve's vain hope that they could be equals after all.)

What's changed is both a lesser thing and something too huge to think about. What's changed is that Steve can't read, any more, what Bucky doesn't say.

Their pals -- and later their squadmates -- always joked that Barnes and Rogers could read one another's minds. Steve used to roll his eyes. It wasn't so hard to tell what Bucky was thinking. Any idiot could've finished Bucky's sentences.

"Guess the rest of us ain't idiots, then," Dum-Dum'd said fondly. 

And sure, there was a time -- the months after he got Bucky out of that Hydra cell -- when _Bucky_ seemed to have lost the knack of knowing what Steve meant without Steve having to spell it out. Almost like ... like Steve'd gotten a thick Southern accent, or started talking like Peggy, or had a recurrence of the stammer that'd made him the laughing stock when he was twelve. Like he couldn't quite catch what Steve was on about. But that passed, didn't it?

Now Steve's hindsight offers up a hundred comparisons between himself _then_ and Bucky _now_. 

It's not how about how a man speaks: it's about what he doesn't say, what he lets his body say for him. And just like Steve, transformed by the serum (and, truth be told, by the fire in his veins that was all his dreams of heroism come alive at last), Bucky has been ... transformed.

His body doesn't speak the same language as before. That goddamn arm -- which Steve loves because it's so much, now, a part of Bucky; because it's a mechanical marvel and because Bucky is learning to accept it as his own limb, not just a weapon forced upon him -- weighs down Bucky's movements, every step or breath or gesture modulated by the heft of the metal. Bucky's been a weapon for seventy years. It shows in every guarded glance, in each measured pace as they walk together, even in the way that Bucky sleeps in Steve's bed, consciously relaxed (downtime: maintenance), constantly aware.

Bucky's body doesn't speak the same language that Steve remembers. And -- he guesses -- nor does his own. It must've been strange for Bucky, waking on that stained table in the Hydra lab, to find Steve leaning over him but _moving_ all wrong. Yeah, the words were the same words they'd always used: jerk, punk, jackass, palooka. But the way their bodies said them could never be the same.

And they're not, not just, Steve and Bucky any more. They're Captain America and the Winter Soldier. SHIELD's perfect soldier and Hydra's death-in-the-night. 

And their bodies have new things to say to one another, lately. The way Steve can kiss Bucky fierce and possessive, holding nothing back. The way that Bucky can manhandle him (which, sure, Steve always _wanted_ \-- but Bucky would never). It wasn't worth it before. They'd have given themselves away with looks, touches, the way their shoulders tilted together, the way they mirrored one another.

Their bodies have learnt to lie, at least to other people.

Their bodies are learning to tell the truth to each other.

It's not easy. Steve wants to hit something when Bucky flinches away from his touch. Bucky scowls fit to start a landslide if Steve leans in too much. (Steve's gonna figure that one out. Is Bucky worried that someone'll see? That someone'll ambush them? What the hell is his problem?)

Sometimes all Steve can do is to close his eyes and not look, not touch. They'll lie in bed, Bucky like some carving on an ancient tomb, Steve curled towards him like a question mark. The distant sea-noise of New York traffic from beyond the open window. (They could never live in Stark's ugly tower. It feels like being outside the world.) Then Bucky's voice can surround him in the darkness, same as it ever did, and tell him that they've made it, they're here, they're together. Tell him that he's loved. Tell him -- without his body screaming "LIE" -- that the two of them have made it through the dark times, and are safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Another writing exercise prompted by trope_bingo. Some ficlets are more ficcish than others!


End file.
